I have a game I play online and I would like to be able to see the time when I am playing. I have written a program that displays the time. When the game is run windowed then the program will show over it, but it doesn't show when run in fullscreen. Is it possible to get it to display over a fullscreen directx game?

I have a few applications that run on top of everything (like coolmon), and occationaly, because of a flook or something, they will continue running on top of a full screen game. The results are always choppy and never pretty.
In short, an app that is full screen has exclusive rights to the video adapter, so now other apps are able too display. You could just run windowed an maximize.

__________________"The whole trouble comes from the fact that there is so much tinkering with software. It is not made in a clean fabrication process, which it should be. What we need, is software engineering." — F.L. Bauer, 1968

Fullscreen DirectX programmers have went to alot of trouble to make Fullscreen DirectX games fullscreen exclusively. The abuse of whatever makes stuff violently appear over fullscreen games is depressing and we might as well go back to the old days of DOS games or windowed games. Plus, it looks awful as well, because both are fighting for control over the display during this process.

Oh, trust me, I've heard several reasons why you'd "need" something on top of a fullscreen. "Oh, I want to see if I got a new e-mail message" "I want to have a downloads window over my screen" "I want a window that will be on top of a fullscreen game acting like a crosshair" "I want my program to do like IM, Firefox, etc"

Why not just make fullscreen games play in place of the desktop? We'll be able to surf the internet and type up a report while "playing" the game.